You Can't Take The Sky From Me: Rebel Galaxy Released

Speaking of Back to the Future, how about that future where we’re all living in shades of grey as space captains on the outskirts of space society? Sorry, today I’m in the unofficial competition with every other wordperson to link a story to BTTF Day in the most tenuous way we can.

That idea is real, though: it’s Rebel Galaxy [official site]. The space scoundrel ’em up launched last night, offering procedurally-generated cosmos to explore, trade in, and maybe – just maybe – double-cross, cheat, and destroy folks with broadside combat. I haven’t had a play yet myself but it looks a bit Freelancer-ish and Firefly-y, yeah?

Right! So there you are, in space, with a ship of your very own. What next? Heck, that’s up to you, friend. You can try to make a peaceful living simply trading or mining – though do watch for pirates. Perhaps you might prefer to go a bit shady and run missions for unsavoury folks. You might like to upgrade your ship or buy a bigger, fancier one. You could just declare war on everyone.

Though its graphics are in pretty 3D (I’m mostly swayed by that garish colour palette – give me unrealistic supercolour space, please!), it plays on a 2D plane like seaships. In combat, you’ll broadside folks and control gun turrets yourself and all that, which looks pretty fun. I know some demand their space be full 3D, but 2D looks a good fit for this sort of light-hearted scampery.

The game’s made by Double Damage Games, a studio founded by Travis Baldree and Erich Schaefer. If their names are familiar, that’s probably because between them they’ve designed games including Diablo, Fate, and Torchlight.